I’ve always been excited by using our knowledge of how our brains work to create better marketing, advertising, and sales strategies. That led me to write Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing (Wiley, 2011) as well as my blog Neuromarketing. I always emphasize practical applications, not theory. I’m the founder of Dooley Direct, a marketing consultancy, and I co-founded College Confidential, the leading college-bound website. That business was acquired by Hobsons, a unit of UK-based DMGT, where I served as VP Digital Marketing and continue in a consulting role. I’ve spent years in direct marketing as the co-founder of a successful catalog firm, and before that directed corporate planning for a Fortune 1000 company. You can learn more about me and my speaking at RogerDooley.com. Follow me on Twitter at @rogerdooley, or on Google Plus at Roger Dooley.

A Brainy Tool to Boost Saving

Have you saved enough for a comfortable retirement? Or, are you at least on track to achieve that goal if you continue saving at your current rate? If you are like many Americans, the answer to both questions is likely “no.”

This writer, artificially aged to 97

Bank of America’s Merrill Edge unit has launched a tool to help motivate savers, particularly younger ones. The tool is based on behavior research that shows that visualizing yourself as older will increase saving behavior. A series of experiments at Stanford demonstrated that subjects “who interacted with their virtual future selves exhibited an increased tendency to accept later monetary rewards over immediate ones.”

To apply this research in a practical way, Bank of America created an artificial aging simulation, the Merrill Edge Face Retirement tool, that takes the user’s photo using a webcam and then adds wrinkles, sagging, and other tweaks to show the user at retirement age and well beyond. At least in my case, it also turned a smile into a grumpy, uneven frown. Clearly, I need to be saving not just for retirement, but plastic surgery too!

The starting point for the aging process

Naturally, Merrill Edge provides conventional financial planning tools and services on the Face Retirement site in addition to the aging simulator.

It’s hard to say how effective this will be – the Stanford research used a more involved process that included digital avatar creation and virtual reality interaction between the subject and his/her “older self.” Still, I’m happy to see academic behavior research being applied in a constructive way to an important, real-world problem. And, if the tool catches on, Merrill Edge will no doubt sell a few products even as they help saving-challenged millennials plan for retirement – “brainy marketing” at its best.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.